Manicure Monday: Preppy Blues

My inspiration for this week’s Manicure Monday came from my weekend getaway in Ocean City, Maryland with my boyfriend. I’m typically dedicated to the Jersey Shore, but as a last hurrah before we both start work, we decided to do some traveling. Ocean City is absolutely beautiful. For those of you that know the Jersey Shore (the real Jersey Shore, not the show), it’s the perfect combination of Cape May and Wildwood. If you take the cleanliness and small town feel of Cape May and add in the boardwalk atmosphere of Wildwood (minus some of the crazies), you’ll get Ocean City. It’s a fun shore town with pristine beaches and a love of seafood (we had all-you-can-eat crab for dinner one night!). It got me in the mood for casual, preppy nails inspired by the beach. Read on to see how I got this look!

As with any base, I began with a base coat (Seche Natural) and two coats of my base color. For this look, I used Essie’s Mint Candy Apple. It’s a cute, minty light blue that really reflects the atmosphere of Ocean City. Creating the design is simpler than it looks (as with most of my designs). To create the white stripes, I used Kiss’s Nail Art Paint in White and created several vertical stripes down my nail. I wanted the design to go on a diagonal, so I made the lines slightly longer as I went across my nail, as shown in the photo to the right. To finish the look, simply connect the tops of the white lines in a diagonal with Kiss Nail Art Paint in Silver Glitter. If you want to make this even easier, Sally Hansen makes nail art pens in different colors – more precise and no brush to deal with!

I’ve gotten such a great reaction from this manicure that I’m going to try to continue with similar manicures! I’m really feeling geometric lines and shapes right now. Stay tuned for next week’s Manicure Monday – I’m hearing more geometry and more glitter!

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About Kathleen Tower

Kathleen is the style editor for The Collabor-eight. She's a 23-year-old true Jersey girl; big hair, bigger heart. Her passion for beauty and makeup started with an internship at Seventeen Magazine and has grown ever since. After graduating from Villanova, she turned her love for Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter into a full-time job as a social media coordinator! When she's not at work, she's browsing everywhere from the Internet to the streets for her own "Manicure Monday" inspiration. She believes that true style comes from a mix of high and low, designer and drugstore, expensive splurges and nearly steals!